Written by R. R. Reno |
Friday, June 10, 2022
What we are witnessing in today’s transgender mania is the next step of “progress”: securing our freedom, not from inherited inhibitions and social censure, but from nature, and, indeed, from reality, which is why so much energy goes into controlling what people can and cannot say. This ambition to transcend the constraints imposed by nature sends transgenderism down the same spiritual grooves as transhumanism and doctor-assisted suicide. Both are body-freedom projects. If we see this connection, I believe we can better understand why transgenderism has gained so much ­influence so quickly.

The progressive imagination envisions a limitless future. Karl Marx thought that modern industrial production marked a new epoch in human history. Amid explosive growth during the industrial revolution, he thought we were on the cusp of material abundance. Marx argued that if we rejected the artificial scarcity of competitive capitalism (revolution!), then the curse of Adam, the necessity of hard labor to ensure survival, could be overcome. In a world of limitless plenty, each would be free to develop every aspect of his personality without limits. In the communist utopia we could “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening,” while adopting the critical pose of the philosopher after dinner.
In 2022, our societies produce more wealth than Marx ever imagined. But few still believe the promise of communism and its dream of freedom from material limits. Aside, perhaps, from proponents of Modern Monetary Theory, most of us accept the enduring role of scarcity in economic life. Yet the dream of a limitless future has not gone away. By my reading of the last half century or more, it has migrated out of economics and class politics into dreams of a cultural revolution. Put simply, having given up on class war as a way to achieve a classless ­society, progressives now devote themselves to a bio-­cultural war on the limits imposed by our bodies.
The 1960s were a key moment in this pivot from what was then called “the Social Question” to concerns about our bodies. For millennia, sex was bound up with marriage and children. This cultural link is rooted in biological reality: the intrinsic fertility of sexual intercourse. But the Pill and new moral norms in the Sixties severed the connection between sex and reproduction. Why, our cultural revolutionaries asked, should sex be limited by fertility? Second-wave feminism reinforced this trend, as did gay liberation. The first insisted that a woman’s body must not limit her professional and personal choices. The latter insisted that the biological reality of our sexual organs should not limit our choice of sexual partners.
In traditional cultures, society justifies itself by appealing to memory. Leaders claim to remain true to ancestors, origins, and divine laws. Modern culture is different. “Progress” is central to the story we tell about ourselves. And in this story progress means overcoming limits. For this reason, the power of the Pill to free women from fertility was widely embraced, and it served as the technological foundation for women’s liberation. The expansion of options for women, along with changes that freed homosexuals from censure, was welcomed as an extension of our long tradition of promoting political freedom from arbitrary power.
But overcoming our bodies is not the same as rebelling against kings or protesting against racial discrimination. In its essence, the American Revolution was a political act, as was the Civil Rights Movement. Neither one redefined marriage, altered what it means to be a parent, or rethought the natural family. By contrast, the sexual revolution, which is still unfolding, is metaphysical in character. As a rebellion against nature’s constraints, it touches on every aspect of what it means to be human.
Some people wonder why transgender issues got added to the agenda of gay liberation. Not a few feminists, and some outspoken lesbians, raised their voices in protest. I think they are naive. “­Progress” is a wheel that must keep turning. John Dewey was perhaps the most influential progressive American intellectual of the twentieth century. At every step, he championed “boundless possibility.” Dewey recognized that progress must be open-ended. It seeks ever to overcome “fixed limits.”

In view of this conception of progress as the never-­ending quest for “boundless possibility,” we should not be surprised that we are being stampeded into affirmations of transgender ideology. It is the next step that overcomes the constraints imposed by our bodies. If our sexual organs should not limit our freedom to have sex with whomever we wish—and please note this assumption underwrites a permissive sexual ethic for heterosexuals, not just homosexuals—why should ­biological facts limit our understanding of ourselves as men or women?

Unlike earlier stages of the sexual revolution, which can be framed as liberations from traditional cultural constraints rather than as metaphysical rebellions, transgenderism concerns our bodies in an open and direct way. The hormones at work in the Pill operate invisibly. The hormones used to block puberty effect changes that all can see, and gender-reassignment surgeries even more so. For this reason, transgenderism has tremendous metaphysical significance as a symbol of successful rebellion. Its open warfare on the body promises final victory.
This fact explains why progressives are so fiercely loyal to transgender ideology. By forthrightly and blatantly denying that our bodies can and should limit our sentiments, feelings, and choices, transgenderism puts an exclamation mark on the sexual revolution. It also brings into the open the theological ambition of progressive cultural politics. At Woodstock and Stonewall, the push to revise moral norms aimed to achieve sexual freedom. But hormonal therapies applied to children have nothing to do with sexual desire, and subsequent surgical interventions mutilate the organs that are capable of sexual stimulation. Except in the case of middle-aged men who “transition,” the transgender phenomenon is not about sex (and I argue below that even for the middle-aged men it’s not, finally, about sex). Instead, what we are witnessing in today’s transgender mania is the next step of “progress”: securing our freedom, not from inherited inhibitions and social censure, but from nature, and, indeed, from reality, which is why so much energy goes into controlling what people can and cannot say.
This ambition to transcend the constraints imposed by nature sends transgenderism down the same spiritual grooves as transhumanism and doctor-assisted suicide. Both are body-freedom projects. If we see this connection, I believe we can better understand why transgenderism has gained so much ­influence so quickly.
Death is the greatest limit. And by this I do not mean simply our final moment. Rather, I take “death” to mean the downward spiral of life toward lifelessness. As someone on the far side of sixty, I’m aware that my body’s vitality is waning. Given my own experience, I’m rather confident that Bruce Jenner and other aging men embrace transgenderism as a therapy. Like Viagra, getting breasts is a technological way of revitalizing the body. Like Botox and cosmetic surgeries, it seeks to hit the pause button on aging. Very few progressive men or women want to mutilate themselves. But they are enchanted by the symbolism of transgenderism. This is especially true of Baby Boomers, for whom agelessness has become a singular preoccupation.
Boys can become girls and girls can become boys! This claim is now obligatory, and contradicting it brings opprobrium. As an assertion, it promises to liberate us from our bodies, allowing us to wiggle free of nature’s limits, of which death is the most dire. Transgender ideology says that gender is not our bodily sex—it is merely “assigned at birth.” This conceit encourages us to imagine that our bodily demise, too, is “assigned” rather than a given, and thus death can be “reassigned” rather than suffered. Doctor-assisted suicide should be understood as mortality reassignment. Our bodies do not determine when we die—we choose, just as a man can determine that he is a woman. Although transhumanism remains a techno-utopian dream, it promises more than “reassignment.” The ambition is to secure the indefinite deferral of death.
The promise of immortality is alluring, especially to educated, rich, and progressive Americans who imagine that they deserve every advantage in life, including the freedom to manage their mortality, if not escape it altogether. To my mind, this allure explains why activists, doctors, mental health protfessionals, politicians, and other adults countenance the mutilation of young people. Like Aztec elites, they sacrifice others to keep alive their theological ambition of overcoming all limits, even and especially those imposed by their own bodies, which are doomed to wear out.
I have emphasized the modern belief in “progress,” which underwrites never-ending efforts to overcome limits. Yet, the collective imagination of the West is shifting. Today’s watchword is “sustainability,” not progress. This preoccupation concerns more than the climate. Lots of responsible people anguish over populist and authoritarian threats. They establish websites and write endlessly, urging us to commit ourselves to the singular task of sustaining liberal democracy and the “rules-based international order.” This decidedly non-progressive call to conserve seems merited, given shifting public opinion. Polling suggests that young people believe their lives will be worse than their parents’ have been. Some are convinced that environmental catastrophe is around the corner.
The upshot is paradoxical. On the one hand, our collective mood is sour. The most we seem able to hope for is that tomorrow won’t be worse than today. That’s the spiritual meaning of “sustainability.” On the other hand, progressivism cultivates explicitly metaphysical and theological ambitions. Yes, liberals press for ­increases in the minimum wage and other traditional goals. But the lawn signs in university towns announce, “Hate has no home here.” This sentiment amounts to reversing the fall of man and proclaiming the kingdom of God. And as I have argued, today’s progressive cultural politics seeks to overturn the authority of nature. Thus we have at once widespread resignation—and God-like ambition.
It’s really very strange. One hundred thousand people die of opioid overdoses in a single year, and elites throw up their hands and do nothing. Meanwhile, they put untold millions into transgender activism and insist that the fullest resources of the medical-industrial complex must be employed to attain its goals.
I could go on with other strange paradoxes. But to my mind, the weird way in which American progressivism has been swallowed by a cultural politics that now revolves around transgender ideology is revealing. It makes evident that powerful elements of our society are engaged in an open war on reality. Ze and Zir are easy to mock and ridicule. But the now-ubiquitous use of “them” as a singular pronoun shows how deeply all of us are now implicated in the rebellion against bodily reality.
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We trust solely in the merits and authority of Christ. It also assumes that we are submitted to His will, coming with His words. We come as slaves, not masters, in prayer, seeking His will alone. This differs vastly from the recitation of a name in order to pull power out of a hat like some cosmic magic trick.

Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”
John 14:13
In Jesus’ name, PLAY!” This was what I heard as I sat in an auditorium waiting for the Pentecostal Explosion dance team to start their routine. I had been invited to this praise and worship event by a college friend. The dance team had walked on stage and was about to begin their routine when suddenly the CD player that had their dance track stopped working. They were working to get it fixed when the dance leader shouted out the command to the CD player. A few amens were heard, but after a painful minute and a half with no success, the dance team decided to do their routine without the music. At this point in my Christian walk, I knew the verse that said that if we asked in Jesus’ name, then Jesus says, “this I will do.” So what happened that night? Had Jesus lied? Never! A better explanation is that this woman had misunderstood what it meant to ask in Jesus’ name.
To be clear, I completely believe that whatever I ask in Jesus’ name, He will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; but the name of Jesus is often invoked like a magic word at the end of our prayers. The way it is often used, we might as well finish our prayers with, “Abracadabra, amen;” I’ve said the customary phrase that ensures my prayers are heard. I even heard a song recently that said, “Just the mention of your name can raise the dead.” Really? The word “Jesus” is not an incantation that unlocks some secret magic. I don’t think this a faithful understanding of the text. So what does it mean to ask in Jesus name?
In His Name
First, we must understand what is meant by the name of Jesus.
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We are commanded in scripture to not love the world. We must be in the world, but we cannot be part of it. If we love the world then we will also take on a love for the things above that God hates. We must love what God loves and hate what He hates. He hates compromise with the world and its ways. We must do the same.

9 For You are Yahweh Most High over all the earth;You are exalted far above all gods.10 Hate evil, you who love Yahweh,Who keeps the souls of His holy ones;He delivers them from the hand of the wicked.11 Light is sown for the righteousAnd gladness for the upright in heart.12 Be glad in Yahweh, you righteous ones,And give thanks for the remembrance of His holy name. Psalms 97:9-12 (LSB) 
I saw a bumper sticker on a SUV the other day. I had seen this particular bumper sticker before so I was not surprised by it. However, for some reason it caused me to focus on the message it was attempting to convey. The bumper sticker read, “Hate is not a family value.” Now, I know and I am sure most of you know that that statement is meant to cause those who stand firm for family values and parental rights pertaining to the exposing of their children to the Homosexual agenda in school or any other public institution to become intimidated. The message conveys the idea that those taking this stance are expressing hatred towards people who only want to be accepted for how God made them. Of course, the Bible clearly teaches us that that concept is a lie and that Homosexuality is a set of perverse, sinful, sexual behaviors that are condemned by God as an abomination. It also says that any who practice them will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
The Apostle John wrote in 1 John 4:11 that God is love and in vv7-8 he states emphatically that genuine Christians will also be partakers and givers of that same love. However, love cannot exist in a vacuum. If one loves, then he or she will also hate. The hate will be directed at anything or anyone who threatens the object of that love. God does hate and all who belong to Him are called to hate what He hates. The following is a list from the book of Proverbs of some things that God hates.
16 There are six things which Yahweh hates,Even seven which are an abomination to Him:17 Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,And hands that shed innocent blood,18 A heart that devises wicked thoughts,Feet that hasten to run to evil,19 A false witness who breathes out lies,And one who spreads strife among brothers.20 My son, observe the commandment of your fatherAnd do not abandon the law of your mother; Proverbs 6:16-20 (LSB) 
God hates a proud look. This is a manifestation of pride. In Hebrew this phrase, “haughty eyes,” literally means “lofty eyes.” The prideful has his or her nose in the air and their eyes uplifted. When pride fills the heart, it does manifest itself in the mannerisms of the person. God hates those who disdain everyone and everything. The sin of pride is probably listed here in this passage first because it is the root of all disobedience and rebellion against God. When I was in the US Navy in the early 1970’s, I was stationed at the Bureau of Naval Personnel in our nation’s capital. There was a fellow who worked in another department on a floor above ours who was probably the most arrogant person I have ever met. He was also blatantly homosexual. The few times I had to deal with him, he made sure I understood how inferior I was to him by not doing his job, but instead deliberately giving me the run around.
When I first arrived at that station in November 1973, I was considered a ‘boot’ so I had to do all of the unpleasant things that those who were there before me did not want to do. That included dealing with that person in question. However, unlike those who passed this task on to me, I was probably just as arrogant as him and had a very short fuse. I was not a believer at that time and so much of my behavior back then is painful for me to recount. What I did was go talk to my Chief. As I spoke to him, I did not know that the Commander who was over us could hear our conversation. I told my Chief about the runaround that fellow gave us every time we tried to get information for our work from his department.  Those over him were always upset with us because they had to continually redo orders that should have been given to us each day, but the process was being short circuited by this fellow when we tried to get help with understanding what the detailer was actually requesting. My Chief cleared his throat and I stopped complaining because we both detected our commanding officer entering the office. He asked which department was the problem and whom it was that was doing this. My Chief looked at me and I answered the question.
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